NelsonG

Galo just hit us with another bouncy bass house track — “Blow the Whistle” out now via Nightenjin. The energetic tune sports an upbeat kick and basslines that’ll get your blood pumping and heart racing at a steady 126 BPM. Matched with a catchy hook and a well played second acid drop, “Blow the Whistle” gives us what we want and then some. The Tampa producer known as Galo is making a name for himself in the scene with a steady wave of remixes and infectious originals that demand listeners to drop what they’re doing and dance. We have no doubt his music will continue to catch on and we’re happy to support him from the jump. Craving more Galo? Check out his recent Obsessed EP as well. Your EDM Premiere: Galo – Blow the Whistle Listen/download: smarturl.it/ners021 Nightenjin · YourEDM Premiere: Galo – Blow The Whistle Connect with Galo SoundCloud | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram Connect with Nightenjin SoundCloud | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram This article was first published on Your EDM. Source: Galo Drops Bouncy New Original “Blow the Whistle” with A Side of Acid [PREMIRE] View the full article

Dirty Audio’s much awaited ‘Inferno EP’ just dropped via Barong Family and its 4 tracks long of innovative bass production. The EP consists of 2 collaborations and 2 solo records. The heavyweight bass producer got together with trap veteran Flosstradamus for ‘Blast Yo Head’ a hypnotic and melodic bass anthem with an energetic grime top-line accompanied by roaring baselines. The record is forceful straight out of the gate which provides foresight into what the rest of the EP has to offer. ‘Inferno,’ the title track of the EP is a collaboration with fellow budding bass producer NXSTY. The record combines both grime and classic old school trap elements with aggressive and metallic sounding synths that litter the record. The record weaves 3 drops into 3 and a half minutes highlighting each respective producers signature sounds. ‘All Nite’ is an expansive and full encompassing sound design master piece. The record paints a beautiful soundscape filled with melodic leads during the break as piercing and grungy baselines eventually take over. ‘Back’ ends off the EP with a crunchy video game-esq vibe that perfectly brings the EP to a close. Listen to the ‘Inferno EP’ below and grab it everywhere here: Inferno EP  This article was first published on Your EDM. Source: Dirty Audio enlists Flosstradamus and NXSTY for the ‘Inferno’ EP View the full article

Mike Linksvayer Contributor Share on Twitter Mike Linksvayer is Head of Developer Policy at GitHub, leading the company's efforts to advocate for developers globally. The Supreme Court will hear arguments tomorrow in Google v. Oracle. This case raises a fundamental question for software developers and the open-source community: Whether copyright may prevent developers from using software’s functional interfaces — known as APIs — to advance innovation in software. The court should say no — free and open APIs protect innovation, competition and job mobility for software developers in America. When we use an interface, we don’t need to understand (or care) about how the function on the other side of the interface is performed. It just works. When you sit down at your computer, the QWERTY keyboard allows you to rapidly put words on the screen. When you submit an online payment to a vendor, you are certain the funds will appear in the vendor’s account. It just works. In the software world, interfaces between software programs are called “application programming interfaces” or APIs. APIs date back to the 1950s and allow developers to write programs that reuse other program functionality without knowing how that functionality is performed. If your program needs to sort a list, you could have it use a sorting program’s API to sort the list for your program. It just works. Developers have historically used software interfaces free of copyright concerns, and this freedom has accelerated innovation, software interoperation and developer job mobility. Developers using existing APIs save time and effort, allowing those savings to be refocused on new ideas. Developers can also reimplement APIs from one software platform to others, enabling innovation to flow freely across software platforms. Importantly, reusing APIs gives developers job portability, since knowledge of one set of APIs is more applicable cross-industry. The upcoming Google v. Oracle decision could change this, harming developers, open-source software and the entire software industry. Google v. Oracle and the platform API bargain Google v. Oracle is the culmination of a decade-long dispute. Back in 2010, Oracle sued Google, arguing that Google’s Android operating system infringed Oracle’s rights in Java. After ten years, the dispute now boils down to whether Google’s reuse of Java APIs in Android was copyright infringement. Prior to this case, most everyone assumed that copyright did not cover the use of functional software like APIs. Under that assumption, competing platforms’ API reimplementation allowed developers to build new yet familiar things according to the API bargain: Everyone could use the API to build applications and platforms that interoperate with each other. Adhering to the API made things “just work.” But if the Google v. Oracle decision indicates that API reimplementation requires copyright permission, the bargain falls apart. Nothing “just works” unless platform makers say so; they now dictate rules for interoperability — charging developers huge prices for the platform or stopping rival, compatible platforms from being built. Free and open APIs are essential for modern developers If APIs are not free and open, platform creators can stop competing platforms from using compatible APIs. This lack of competition blocks platform innovation and harms developers who cannot as easily transfer their skills from project to project, job to job. MySQL, Oracle’s popular database, reimplemented mSQL’s APIs so third-party applications for mSQL could be “ported easily” to MySQL. If copyright had restricted reimplementation of those APIs, adoption of MySQL, reusability of old mSQL programs and the expansion achieved by the “LAMP” stack would have been stifled, and the whole ecosystem would be poorer for it. This and other examples of API reimplementation — IBM’s BIOS, Windows and WINE, UNIX and Linux, Windows and WSL, .NET and Mono, have driven perhaps the most amazing innovation in human history, with open-source software becoming critical digital infrastructure for the world. Similarly, a copyright block on API-compatible implementations puts developers at the mercy of platform makers say so — both for their skills and their programs. Once a program is written for a given set of APIs, that program is locked-in to the platform unless those APIs can also be used on other software platforms. And once a developer learns skills for how to use a given API, it’s much easier to reuse than retrain on APIs for another platform. If the platform creator decides to charge outrageous fees, or end platform support, the developer is stuck. For nondevelopers, imagine this: The QWERTY layout is copyrighted and the copyright owner decided to charge $1,000 dollars per keyboard. You would have a choice: Retrain your hands or pay up. All software used by anyone was created by developers. We should give developers the right to freely reimplement APIs, as developer ability to shift applications and skills between software ecosystems benefits everyone — we all get better software to accomplish more. I hope that the Supreme Court’s decision will pay heed to what developer experience has shown: Free and open APIs promote freedom, competition, innovation and collaboration in tech. View the full article

After all those years of startups not going public, 2020 is a little bit different. It feels like more companies are filing, and more companies are seeing their debuts through. We’re even seeing direct listings and SPAC-led deals, along with a trove of traditional IPOs. Data backs up how we feel about this year’s IPO market. Notably, however, the year did not start out too hot. Quite a lot of 2020’s IPO results came in Q3, with the quarter’s IPO tally setting a record in terms of IPO volume and dollars raised since at least the start of 2016, according to data from PwC. But on the back of the third quarter, 2020 is going to be a good year for tech debuts, at least compared to recent history. Why? It’s a good question. Parsing through the Root IPO filing this morning a TechCrunch reader asked why we’re seeing so many IPOs after they were out of vogue for so long; after a decade of staying private being the hot thing, why are so many companies trying to get public now? There are a few reasons, I think. Here are some good ones: In today’s market, public valuations now regularly outstrip private valuations. This is something a startup exec told me recently, and I heartily agreed. One only needs to look at, say, the Snowflake IPO to understand this dynamic. Or the recent JFrog debut. Or how investors initially responded to Lemonade’s IPO. You get the idea. Public investors, and especially their retail investing cadre, are content to bid the value of unicorns up in anticipation of future growth. Much like private investors have long done. This means that it is a good time to go public if you eventually have to, as public equities are near all-time highs. If you are a company that is going to go public in the next few years, why not do so now, when there is demonstrated demand for growth-oriented shares, and you can probably defend your valuation? It just makes sense! That fact is compounded by the sheer number of private companies that are old as hell and need to get the frak out of the private sandbox. If you are a company that really needs to go public, like Airbnb (for technical reasons relating to expiring options), now is great and now is good, as tomorrow may well be worse. And good news, there are so many ways to go public now! Finally, there are myriad options available to companies looking to list. Don’t want to price via a traditional IPO? No worries. How about a direct listing? Don’t want that or a traditional IPO? No worries. How about one of around a dozen SPACs that are hunting for companies to take public? You gotta make hay while the sun is out, and with the Nasdaq still over 11,000 and rumor of more federal relief ever present to keep markets high, it’s a fine time to list. Hence the wave. In closing, it’s worth noting that the average 2020 pace of unicorn IPOs is still not nearly enough to clear the rolls. There are going to be a lot of unicorns stuck in their pen once the public market, inevitably, turns. This is going to come up on the podcast, probably soon. So make sure you’re tuned in. View the full article

COVID-19 was officially declared a pandemic on March 11 earlier this year by the WHO. Foreseeing such a possibility, right at the beginning of March, Tomorrowland made the tough decision to cancel its annual Winter event in the Alps d’Huez in France, which was scheduled for March 14-21. The next day, TML Winter began offering discounted tickets to its 2021 event in the wake of the cancellation. At the time, it wasn’t clear how long we’d be in this situation, but now, we know it’s not ending anytime soon. To that effect, TML Winter has quietly also cancelled its 2021 event. Near as we can tell, the event hasn’t made any posts on its social media channels about the cancellation, but going to the website now features this message: “Tomorrowland Winter 2021 cannot take place due to the uncertain circumstances created by COVID-19. Organizing a festival such as Tomorrowland Winter requires a lot of preparation, both by the organisers and local partners, as well as by you, the People of Tomorrow. Considering the current lack of prospects for the coming months, Tomorrowland has no choice but to not organize a Tomorrowland Winter edition in 2021.” With 2020 nearing its end and COVID-19 otherwise, many spring 2020 events that have already pushed to 2021 must again reconsider postponing to another time. Events like Ultra in Miami and Coachella in Indio are in a tough bind. Though Florida has already fully reopened, time will tell if it creates another spike and has to enter lockdown yet again. Tomorrowland currently has no information as to how ticketbuyers for the 2021 event should proceed, but buyers should be on the lookout in their email and the website for details and instructions. Photo via RUDGR for Tomorrowland Winter This article was first published on Your EDM. Source: Tomorrowland Winter Quietly Cancels 2021 Event View the full article

Read more... More about Cybersecurity, Election 2020, Tech, and CybersecurityView the full article

Under US copyright law, Internet providers must terminate the accounts of repeat infringers “in appropriate circumstances.” In the past such drastic action was rare, but with the backing of legal pressure, ISPs are increasingly being held to this standard. ISPs Sued Over Repeat Infringers Several major music industry companies including Arista Records, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music, and Warner Records, have filed lawsuits against some of the largest U.S. Internet providers. The list of targets includes RCN, which was sued last year. The liability lawsuits are seen as a major threat to the ISP industry, as multiple companies face hundreds of millions of dollars in potential damages. This is not just a hypothetical threat, as the $1 billion verdict against Cox made clear. The Cox verdict bolstered the confidence of the music companies to score big in cases against other ISPs as well. Before things get that far, however, they will have to overcome various counterclaims. Over the past several months ISPs including Charter and Bright House have countersued the rightsholders for sending deceptive anti-piracy notices. This week, RCN follows this trend. RCN Strikes Back The Internet provider filed its amended answers to the music companies’ complaint at a federal court in New Jersey, denying most copyright infringement allegations. At the same time, RCN countersued the music companies, the RIAA, and piracy tracking firm Rightscorp for unfair competition. “RCN’s counterclaims are based on Rightscorp’s, the RIAA’s, and the Record Labels’ unfair and fraudulent business practices in generating and sending millions of unsupported emails accusing RCN’s customers of BitTorrent-based copyright infringement, while intentionally destroying the evidence necessary to determine whether any of those accusations were true,” RCN begins. The ISP doesn’t deny that it received millions of notices from Rightscorp listing copyright infringements allegedly carried out by RCN’s customers. However, these claims are based on ‘flimsy’ evidence, much of which has been destroyed since. According to RCN, the record labels are trying to force ISPs into taking extreme measures without proper evidence. “Face The Wrath of the RIAA” “In a sane world, only actual, verifiable evidence of copyright infringement would provide a sufficient basis for an ISP to terminate the internet access of a customer. But that is not the world the Record Labels and the RIAA want to live in,” RCN writes. “Instead of actually policing their copyrights — and identifying and proving claims of direct copyright infringement — Counterclaim Defendants seek to create an environment in which ISPs, including RCN, have no choice but to indiscriminately terminate the internet access of every customer accused of copyright infringement, or face the wrath of the Record Labels and the RIAA.” RCN points out that it has a publicly published DMCA policy that describes the minimum requirements for a legitimate infringement notification. Among other things, this includes a PGP signature, to verify that the sender is legitimate, and a valid copyright registration number. Rightscorp’s notices lacked both. Rightscorp’s Shoddy Practices The ISP informed Rightscorp about these deficiencies and pointed the company to its DMCA policy, but that didn’t change anything. The notices simply kept coming in, and RCN could not verify whether they were accurate or not. “The RIAA and the Record Labels have known all of this for years. Nevertheless, they have allowed Rightscorp to continue sending suspect emails accusing RCN’s customers of copyright infringement while destroying all of the evidence on which those accusations are based. “Rightscorp’s process for detecting copyright infringement is a sham built on shoddy business practices, the willful destruction of evidence, and a cavalier approach to — if not outright disregard for — the truth.” Dubious Settlement Demands Verification of copyright infringement notices is crucial, RCN points out, also because Rightscorp included settlement demands. This is a controversial practice, even among copyright holders. RCN’s counterclaim cites emails where employees from Sony Record Labels discussed Rightscorp’s efforts “to milk consumers,” expressing concern that “[t]o the average user, it looks like us” and asking if there is “any way to block this activity if we don’t support and don’t benefit.” However, these same copyright notices are now being used as ammunition against ISPs, including RCN. According to the ISP, Rightscorp wasn’t picked as a partner because its evidence is great, but simply to gain leverage over ISPs and pressure them to disconnect subscribers. Accept the New Copyright Regime, or Else “The unspoken threat is RCN’s reality: accept the new copyright regime or face the cost and burden of defending against a protracted secondary copyright infringement lawsuit seeking vast sums of damages.” The counterclaim accuses the record labels, RIAA, and Rightscorp of unfair and fraudulent conduct amounting to unfair competition under California’s Business and Professions Code. Unlike counterclaims from other ISPs, there is no allegation of sending false notices under the DMCA. The end goal is the same, however. By casting doubt over the evidence at the basis of the lawsuit against it, RCN hopes to turn the tables and come out as the winner in this legal dispute. — A copy of RCN’s first amended answers and the counterclaim against the music companies, the RIAA, and Rightscorp, is available here (pdf) From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more. View the full article

SpaceX has secured a contract valued at just shy of $150 million by the U.S. Space Development Agency, a branch of the U.S. military that is tasked with building out America’s space-based defense capabilities. The contract covers creation and delivery of “space vehicles,” aka actual satellites, that will form a constellation offering global coverage of advance missile warning and tracking. Alongside SpaceX, the SDA also granted a contract for the same capabilities valued at nearly $200 million for L3Harris. That company is a U.S-based defense contracted and tech co formed by the merger of Harris and L3 last year, combining the two legacy contractors to create one of the top 10 largest defense companies globally. It’s no surprise that L3Harris would be tapped for this work, but SpaceX’s award is definitely a new extension of the company’s business. These satellites will apparently resemble the Starlink satellites that SpaceX has already been deploying to make up its own broadband internet constellation (although with different payloads, of course). Starlink is designed as a low-Earth orbit constellation that can achieve global coverage through volume and redundancy, providing benefits in terms of cost and coverage when compared to traditional geostationary satellites. The U.S. has repeatedly expressed an interest in building out space-based defense resources that use small satellites, citing advantages in terms of speed of deployment, as well as responsiveness and the ability to build in redundancy that could be useful in case of attacks on any resources by potential enemy actors. If SpaceX becomes a more frequent provider not only of launch services, but also of spacecraft including satellites, it could open up plenty of new lucrative long-term revenue opportunities, particular when it comes to defense and national security contracts. View the full article

Snap, the social media platform for Gen Z, launched its latest slate of Snap Originals today, in a sign that not every media company has failed to capture the imagination of an audience with short form content. Even as Quibi’s billion dollar gambit continues to falter, Snap is forging ahead with a slate of new short form series with episodes averaging no longer than five minutes. Taking their talent from social media, sports, music, and traditional entertainment, Snap’s shows feature entertainers like Loren Gray, Trippie Redd, Swae Lee, Haden Smith, MK Asante, Colin Kaepernick and Kevin Hart. As Snap says, truly some of the world’s greatest storytellers. Here’s a list of what Snap is running: Honestly Loren (ITV America’s Sirens Media) – Watch as the famous-since-thirteen singer and social media celebrity, Loren Gray, confronts existential dread in a docuseries that’s set to premiere in 2021. Life’s a Tripp (Trooper Entertainment) – Musician Trippie Redd and some celebrity friends will go on an exploration around America to confront some of the country’s greatest and most pressing issues — from drug addiction to police reform — in what’s sure to be informational five minute installments set to air in 2021. Swae Meets World (Big Fish Entertainment) – This Swae Lee documentary due for a 2021 release follows the artist as he prepares to launch his first solo album. The Solution Committee (Westbrook Media) – Jaden Smith tackles racial and social justice issues with the help of activists and entertainer friends like Justin and Hailey Bieber, Common, Bella Hadid, Willow Smith, Janelle Monáe, Phoebe Robinson, Yara Shahidi and Lena Waithe. The series, which premiered in late September addresses policing and criminal justice reform, voting access, gender justice, housing, economic justice, climate change and education reform. Good Luck Voter! (Snap Inc.) – Snap unveiled this three-part series last week starring Loren Gray, Ross Smith, Erin Lim, Kimberly Jones, MK Asante and more which is designed to share information and memes on voting and American politics. The series was written by Peter Hamby of Snapchat’s “Good Luck America.” While Black with MK Asante (Main Event Media, an All3Media America company, and MK Asante Productions) – In the second season of this Snap vehicle, viewers will watch host MK Asante continue to explore what it means to be young and Black in America. The series will kick off with a special voting episode airing 10/25/20 before the series returns this November 2020. Colin Kaepernick VS the World (season 3; COMPLEX) – The third season of this Snap series will document the life of Kaepernick, the former quarterback and current civil rights advocate and his ongoing battles for racial justice. Docuseries premieres 2021. Finally, Kevin Hart will star in an unscripted series called Coach Kev, made to inspire Snapchatters to live their “best life” — a life, presumably best lived and documented through Snap. The series premieres this Saturday, October 10. View the full article

“30 years ago on 5th October 1990 we formed The Prodigy while out at a rave…” And the rest, as they say, was history. Now one of the most beloved electronica/breakbeat groups in the world, The Prodigy has released seven studio albums. The most recent was No Tourists in 2018 with plans for more on the way. However, Keith Flint tragically died last year and any plans for new work was put on hold, then COVID-19 put things even more on hold. Still, the group has been back in the studio working on new material. Thirty years later, and The Prodigy are sure to still have some tricks up their sleeves. Listen back on some of their biggest tracks below. Photo by Martyn Goodacre This article was first published on Your EDM. Source: Thirty years ago, The Prodigy was born View the full article

When Salesforce Ventures launched the first $50 million Impact Fund in 2017, it wanted to invest not only in promising cloud businesses, but startups with a socially positive mission. Today, the company launched the second Impact Fund, this time doubling its initial investment with a new $100 million fund The latest fund is also designed to help bring more investment into areas that the company feels needs to be emphasized as a corporate citizen beyond pure business goals including education and reskilling, climate action, diversity, equity and inclusion, and providing tech for nonprofits and foundations. Suzanne DiBianca, Chief Impact Officer and EVP of Corporate Relations at Salesforce says the money is being put to work on some of the world’s most pressing social issues. “Now more than ever, we believe business can be a powerful platform for change. We must leverage technology and invest in innovative ideas to drive the long-term health and wellness of all citizens, enable equal access to education and fuel impactful climate action,” DiBianca said in a statement. Brent Leary, founder and principal analyst at CRM Essentials says that this investment is consistent with their commitment to social issues. “This fits right in with Salesforce’s efforts on making business a force for change. They talk it, they walk it, and they invest in it,” Leary told TechCrunch. Claudine Emeott, Director of Impact Investing, in a Q&A on the company website, said that as with the first fund, the company is looking for cloud companies with some ties to Salesforce that address these core social components and can have a positive impact on the world. While there is a social aspect to each company, it still follows a particular investment thesis related to cloud computing. Her goal is to have a portfolio of cloud startups by next year that are addressing the set of social needs the firm has laid out. “I hope that [by next year] we have made numerous investments in companies that are addressing today’s concurrent crises, and I hope that we can point to their measurable impact on those crises. I hope that we can point to exciting new integrations between our portfolio companies and Salesforce to tackle these challenges together,” Emeott said. Paul Greenberg, president of the 56 Group and author of CRM at the Speed of Light, says that while he doesn’t always agree with Salesforce on every matter, he admires their social bent. “As an analyst, I might battle with them on some of their products, the things they do in the market and their messaging, but as a human being, I applaud them for their deep commitment to the common good,” he said. Salesforce has always had a social component to its corporate goals including its 1-1-1 philanthropy model. While Salesforce isn’t always completely consistent as with its contract with ICE, it does put money and personnel toward helping in the communities where it operates, encouraging volunteerism and charitable giving from the top down and modeled across the organization. This investment fund, while looking at the investments through a distinctly Salesforce lens, is designed to fund startups to help solve intractable social problems, while using its extensive financial resources for the betterment of the world. View the full article

Ever get a song stuck in your head, but you don’t know the name of the artist or the track title? Spotify now allows you to search its music catalog through lyrics. As revealed in a tweet from @linafab, part of the design team at Spotify, iOS and Android users can search out songs using lyrics only. Sometimes the lyrics happen to be part of a title, but this allows for ease of music exploration and discovery. Music lovers can skip their search engine and go directly to Spotify for answers. We just had to give it a try — and a quick, “hot boys hot boys nasty,” instantly pulled up GRiZ and Wreckno‘s collaboration “Medusa.” It works! You can also view lyrics via Spotify x Genius, thanks to a feature that was already in place. Some songs also include interesting facts and inspiration behind the music. To get started: Start playing music. Tap the Now Playing bar at the bottom of the screen. Note: On tablet, tap the album artwork in the side menu. Scroll down to see the song’s lyrics and their story. Apple Music reportedly introduced search by lyrics back in 2018. H/T: 9to5Mac This article was first published on Your EDM. Source: Spotify Introduces Search By Lyrics for iOS & Android View the full article

When Alexa launched six years ago, no one imagined that by today there would be hundreds of millions of Alexa-enabled devices or that Alexa would become part of so many lives. For people who are blind or visually impaired, voice assistants are a huge convenience, whether you are calling a loved one, cooking a meal, checking a sports score, or asking for the weather or time. This fall, Alexa introduced personalization and conversational capabilities that are steps toward a more human-like, digital factotum. It’s exciting to announce that Amazon’s Josh Miele, Principal Accessibility Researcher at Amazon’s Lab126, and Anne Toth, Director of Amazon’s Alexa Trust, will be speaking at Sight Tech Global, a virtual, global event that addresses how rapid advances in technology, many of them AI-based, will influence the development of accessibility and assistive technology for people who are blind or visually impaired. The show, a project for the Vista Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired in Silicon Valley, launched on TechCrunch. The virtual event is Dec. 2-3 and free to the public. Registration is open. Josh Miele (Photo: Barbara Butkus) “Before Alexa,” says Miele, who is a blind scientist with numerous inventions to his credit and a Ph.D. from UCBerkeley in psychoacoustics, “people newly experiencing vision loss would need to learn how to use a computer or phone with a screen reader in order to shop online or download audio books. With Alexa, using only voice commands, people with visual and motor disabilities can also make phone calls, get recipes, play music, schedule reminders, set timers, and more.” “The experience is made possible,” says Miele, “by Alexa’s confluence of voice recognition, natural language processing and deep learning—a powerful indicator of what is possible, but clearly there are still gaps to close.” Anne Toth was a pioneering accessibility advocate at Yahoo, where in 2003 she commissioned the first usability studies to determine how Yahoo’s services worked with assistive technology, such as screen readers. “To be brief,” she says, “they didn’t. The user stories and videos from that first study fundamentally changed how we thought about this issue and marked the moment I moved from being curious to being an advocate.” As a leader on the Alexa Trust team at Amazon, Toth is focused on accessibility, privacy and deepening customer trust in Alexa-enabled devices. Anne Toth “Alexa-enabled devices,” says Toth, “have the benefit of being born in an era when these issues are no longer seen as offering secondary benefits to our customers. When our devices become more accessible, they become better for everyone. There is no upper threshold for what that means.” At Sight Tech Global on December 2-3, attendees will hear from Toth and Miele about upcoming Alexa feature advances and the underlying technologies. Get your free pass now. Sight Tech Global welcomes sponsors. We are grateful to our current sponsors, who include Verizon Media, Google, Waymo, Microsoft, Amazon, Ford, Mojo Vision, Humanware and Wells Fargo. The event is organized by volunteers and all proceeds benefit The Vista Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired in Silicon Valley. View the full article

Facebook and Twitter took action against a post from President Trump Tuesday that claimed that COVID-19 is “far less lethal” than the flu. Trump made the tweet and posted the same message to Facebook just hours after arriving back at the White House following a multi-day stay at Walter Reed medical center, where the president was treated after testing positive for COVID-19. Facebook took down Trump’s post outright Tuesday, stating that it “[removes] incorrect information about the severity of COVID-19, and have now removed this post.” Twitter hid the tweet behind a warning saying that it broke the platform’s rules about spreading misleading or harmful COVID-19 misinformation. “We placed a public interest notice on this Tweet for violating our COVID-19 Misleading Information Policy by making misleading health claims about COVID-19,” a Twitter spokesperson said. Taking down one of the president’s posts is rare but it wasn’t a first for Facebook. In August, Facebook removed a video Trump shared in which he claimed that children are “almost immune” to COVID-19. The clip originally aired on Fox News. On twitter, Trump’s tweet will have “significantly limited” engagement, meaning that it can’t be retweeted without quoting, liked or replied to, but it will remain up because it’s in the public interest. By the time Twitter took action on the tweet it had more than 59,000 retweets and 186,000 likes. Facebook and Twitter both created new policies to address the spread of pandemic-related misinformation earlier this year. In the pandemic’s earlier days, the false claim that COVID is comparable to the flu was a common refrain from Trump and his allies, who wished to downplay the severity of the virus. But after months of the virus raging through communities around the U.S., the claim that COVID-19 is like the flu is an even more glaring lie. While much remains not understood about the virus, it can follow an aggressive and unpredictable trajectory in patients, attacking vital organs beyond the lungs and leaving people who contracted it with long-lasting health effects that are not yet thoroughly studied or understood. Trump’s own physician has said the president “may not be out of the woods yet” in his own fight with the virus. In recent months, the president’s social media falsehoods had shifted more toward lies about the safety of vote-by-mail, the system many Americans will rely on to cast votes as the pandemic rages on. But less than a day out of a multi-day stay at the hospital where he was given supplemental oxygen and three experimental treatments, it’s clear Trump’s own diagnosis with the virus doesn’t mean he intends to treat the health threat that’s upended the economy and claimed more than 200,000 lives with any seriousness at all. Instead, Trump is poised to continue waging a political war against platforms like Twitter and Facebook — if the results of the election give him the chance. Trump has already expressed interest in dismantling Section 230, a key legal provision that protects platforms from liability for user-generated content. He tweeted “REPEAL SECTION 230!!!” Tuesday after Twitter and Facebook took action against his posts saying the flu is worse than COVID-19. View the full article

The musician is being recognized for “using manifold powers of interpretation to infuse jazz standards and original compositions with a vibrant, global, Black, feminist sensibility” View the full article

The Mexican-American singer-songwriter’s next release arrives next week View the full article

Timbaland co-produced the single View the full article

Google announced today it’s introducing a Stories feature to its Google app for iOS and Android, which now reaches over 800 million people per month. In a new carousel within the app, users in supported markets will be presented with a row of tappable visual Stories from participating publishers. These Stories can include full screen video, photos, and audio and can link out to the publisher’s other content, if desired. The company has been developing its own Stories product for some time. In 2018, it introduced AMP Stories, based on technology developed for Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages project. The Stories, which are already integrated into mobile Google Search, are meant to give Google its own alternative to the Stories offering found in other apps like Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook. But, in Google’s case, Stories are focused on publisher content. Image Credits: Google Today, Google is referring to this visual content as “Web Stories,” not AMP Stories, and is integrating the experience into the Google search app in the U.S., India and Brazil to start. Here, users will see the row of Web Stories at the top of the Discover tab, where they can tap to enter the full-screen Story experience. Like Stories found in other apps, you can tap to move forward to the next page in a Google Web Story or swipe to move to a different Story in the carousel. Image Credits: Google Publishers are responsible for authoring their Stories and have control over Story monetization, hosting, and sharing and adding links to the Stories, Google notes. To create these Stories, the publishers can use drag-and-drop tools like the Web Story editor for WordPress, MakeStories, or NewsroomAI. Technical users can instead opt to code Web Stories themselves. Early adopters of the format have been using Web Stories on their homepage, on social channels, in newsletters, and more, in addition to having them featured in Google Search, the company says. Image Credits: Google Google has been working with a number of publishers to help them create Web Stories for Search and now, its native mobile app. Partners include Forbes, Vice, Refinery29, USA Today, Lonely Planet, Now This, Thrillist, Popsugar, The Dodo, Bustle, Input, Nylon, The Hollywood Reporter, Blavity, PC Gamer, Golfweek, and many others. The publishers and Google collaborated on the new product and helped build out its features, Google says. To date, over 2,000 websites have published Stories that have been indexed by Google. The update to the Google app on iOS and Android is rolling out today. View the full article

Read more... More about Apple, Prime Day, Airpods, Mashable Shopping, and TechView the full article

Featuring his quarantine renditions of songs by John Lennon, Billy Bragg, the late Adam Schlesinger, and others View the full article

The 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to three scientists Tuesday for their discoveries around one of the most fascinating and mysterious parts of our known universe: black holes. Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez were jointly awarded half of the annual Prize for their discovery of a compact, supermassive object indicative of a black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. Richard Penrose was awarded half of the Prize for mathematical methods proving that black holes are indeed a consequence of Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity. Einstein's 1915 theory states that massive objects, like planets, stars, and supermassive blackholes distort space-time around them, which gives us gravity. The more massive an object is, the stronger its distortion is, and thus the stronger its gravitational pull is. Read more... More about Black Holes, Nobel Prize, Science, and Space View the full article

Sometimes you just have to know which song it was where Fred Durst said, "L-I-M-P Bizkit is right here!" Take heart, Spotify's newest little feature will help you out in those dire circumstances. As of Monday, Spotify users can now type lyrics into the music streaming app's search bar and expect to find which song the lyrics are from. We've all been there: Sometimes you can remember a line from a song, but no other information about it. With lyric searching on Spotify, you no longer need to turn to Google to figure out what you have stuck in your head. My team just shipped something on iOS and Android - now you can find songs by lyrics on Spotify Give it a try pic.twitter.com/bOs4Ob9O84 — Lina (@linafab) October 5, 2020 Read more... More about Spotify, Apple Music, Music Streaming, Apps And Software, and Spotify StreamingView the full article

While many companies are using chatbots and other forms of automation to manage their communication with customers, Boston-based Tone is betting that humans will remain a key part of the equation. “The traditional models of bots and humans is, ‘Hello, I’m a bot, now you get to battle with me to finally get to a human,’” said Tone CEO Tivan Amour. “Our verison of that is, ‘I’m a human using AI to get you the answers you need more quickly.’” Amour and his co-founders Vlad Pick and Kyle Weidman previously created a bicycle startup called Fortified Bicycle, and he said they “figured out that the best way to close our customers on these $750 to $1,000 orders was to actually engage them in text message conversations.” After all, when it comes to “high consideration” purchases like bicycles, people usually want discuss their questions and concerns with another human being. Over time, the Fortified team built what Amour said was a “semi-automated system” to help its sales team stay on top of these conversations. “We started bragging to our friends about it, ‘You’ve gotta do this, it’s the future of mobile commerce,’” he recalled. “And they’d say, ‘Okay, that’s cool, but we don’t have any of the systems of doing that, we don’t have the salespeople.’” Tone’s founders So after selling Fortified Bicycle, Amour and Pick created Tone to help any e-commerce business manage similar text message conversations. Tone employs its own team of human agents to actually do the texting, assisted by software that helps them find the information they need. It integrates with e-commerce systems like Shopify and Magento, and it’s already working with more than 1,000 brands like ThirdLove, Peak Design and Usual Wines — who are seeing as much as a 26% increase in revenue and a 15% increase in order size. Amour also noted that specific Tone agents are assigned to specific brands, which means that customers will be talking to the same person whenever they have a question for that business. In some cases, customers have been talking to the same agent for months or years. (Update: Tone clarified that this isn’t a person, but a single persona that’s probably an amalgamation of multiple agents.) “Particularly in a post-COVID world, it’s pretty clear that online shopping has become the dominant form of shoping, but I think nobody has thought about how you replace that human experience that you get in traditional retail,” he said. Tone is announcing today that it has raised $4 million in seed funding led by Bling Capital, with participation from Day One Ventures, One Way Ventures, TIA Ventures and executives from Google, Facebook, Dropbox and Uber. With the new funding, Amour said Tone will be able to build out the “relationship automation” aspect of the product. He also suggested that the platform could eventually expand beyond text messaging, but it sounds like that’s not a big priority. “In theory, we’re a conversational sales platform more than we are an SMS company,” he said. “However there are a bunch of trends right now [such as the growth of mobile commerce] that make SMS the most obvious place for this sort of innovation.” View the full article

Mini projectors on sale on Amazon ahead of Prime Day as of Oct. 6: FAN FAVORITE: VANKYO Leisure 3 mini projector — save $15 MOST SAVINGS: APEMAN 4500L mini projector — save $61 BEST FOR KIDS: Anker Nebula Astro Portable Projector — save $40 A projector is a fun, space-saving investment for movie nights — and a mini projector (aside from being very cute) is a great option for kids' rooms, cramped apartments, and even small outdoor spaces. One note: They won't sub in for a full-size projector, which can run in the hundreds, even thousands of dollars. If you want the full home theater experience, definitely opt for one of those. Read more... More about Prime Day, Projectors, Mashable Shopping, Entertainment, and Movies Tv Shows View the full article

Read more... More about Apple, Apple Event, Iphone 12, Tech, and Consumer TechView the full article